5 Projects, 180 Sessions: What I Built
From SaaS platforms to infrastructure to marketing sites — what Claude handles well and where it struggles
Over 974+ hours, I used Claude Code across 5 distinct project areas. Not toy projects or tutorials — production systems with real users, real integrations, and real deployment pipelines.
Here's what Claude Code handles well, what it struggles with, and what surprised me about each.
the platform SaaS Platform Development
85sessions
Core product development for the platform, a SaaS platform with dashboard, onboarding flows, agent chat, page editor, pipeline board, and analytics. Claude Code was used extensively for feature implementation (onboarding checklist, ownership transfer, demo lobby, collapsible sections, mobile responsive design), bug fixing (navigation issues, disappearing UI elements, cookie errors), and creating PRs. This was the primary workstream, heavily leveraging multi-file TypeScript/Next.js edits and iterative code review cycles.
With 85 sessions, this was heavy enough to reveal Claude's real strengths and weaknesses in this domain. The patterns that emerged here informed many of the tips in the Power User Guide.
MCP Tools, Connectors & Agent Infrastructure
35sessions
Building and debugging MCP (Model Context Protocol) tools, connectors (Calendly, a third-party service, Google Reviews), and an Evolution Engine for the agent system. Claude Code was used to plan and implement new tool endpoints, fix 12+ MCP tool bugs from QA reports, handle database migrations, wire up connectors across multiple agent systems, and push PRs. Sessions involved significant Bash commands for testing and deployment alongside complex multi-file TypeScript changes.
With 35 sessions, this was heavy enough to reveal Claude's real strengths and weaknesses in this domain. The patterns that emerged here informed many of the tips in the Power User Guide.
Stripe Connect & Billing Integration
15sessions
Full Stripe Connect integration including building the payment infrastructure, configuring production Stripe settings, fixing deploy bugs, and cost analysis/optimization with prompt caching. Claude Code handled the end-to-end implementation across server and client code, resolved production issues like trailing newlines in Vercel environment variables causing 500 errors, and documented the solution for future reference.
Even with only 15 sessions, Claude handled the full scope — from initial setup through production deployment.
Marketing Site, Content & Video Production
25sessions
Work on a marketing/landing site including features pages with screenshots, OG images, favicon, privacy/terms pages, copy changes, link fixes, Resend email integration, and a dev blog built from Claude Code session data. Additionally, several sessions involved creating Remotion animated explainer videos and demo scripts for the product. Claude Code scaffolded full Remotion projects with scenes and design tokens, though some video planning sessions stalled in exploration without producing output.
At 25 sessions, the dominant pattern was rapid iteration — fixing issues as they surfaced rather than trying to prevent them upfront.
DevOps, Deployment & Infrastructure
20sessions
Deployment workflows, Git operations, Supabase migration management, Vercel configuration, Terraform fixes for AWS (EC2 key pair issues), Google OAuth setup, and disk space/file cleanup. Claude Code was used for pushing migrations, resolving Vercel CLI project linking issues, fixing environment variable problems, cherry-picking commits, and managing branch merges. These sessions were typically shorter but critical for keeping production environments running smoothly.
At 20 sessions, the dominant pattern was rapid iteration — fixing issues as they surfaced rather than trying to prevent them upfront.
Cross-Project Patterns
After working with Claude across all 5 areas, a few things became clear:
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TypeScript is Claude's sweet spot. With 4,169 file touches across the period, TypeScript/React projects had the highest success rate by far. The type system acts as a guardrail that catches Claude's mistakes early.
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Infrastructure work needs more hand-holding. Terraform, database migrations, and deployment configs require more explicit instructions. Claude tends to make assumptions about infrastructure that are wrong.
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Integrations are surprisingly strong. Payment systems, calendar APIs, OAuth flows, MCP servers — Claude handled these well because the APIs are well-documented and the patterns are clear.